US Patent Issued to BNSF Railway on Oct. 14 for "Apparatus and method for wear detection of railroad vehicle wheels" (Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,441,376, issued on Oct. 14, was assigned to BNSF Railway Co. (Fort Worth, Texas).

"Apparatus and method for wear detection of railroad vehicle wheels" was invented by Hark Braren (Fort Worth, Texas) and Erik Karl Frohberg (Keller, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A railroad wheel impact load detection test panel includes a secondary instrumentation rail proximate a field side of a primary or running rail of a section of railroad track, and elevated a prescribed distance so that the wheels of a rail car traverse the instrumentation rail within the test panel. The instrumentation rail includes an optical strain gauge to sense the wheel...